Search age:

Search in:

Govt to release some asylum children

Elise Scott

About 150 asylum seeker children will be released from mainland detention centres but hundreds more will remain locked up in offshore locations like Nauru.

The Abbott government has announced plans to boost bridging visa support services - including access to health care, schooling and English courses - which will allow some detained children to move into the community with their families.

Children in mainland detention centres who are aged under 10 and who arrived before July 19 last year will be eligible for release under the new plan. Their families will also be released.

But the Human Rights Commission says the move does not go far enough, and bridging visa conditions that prohibit work mean children could be forced into poverty.

Advertisement

Commission president Professor Gillian Triggs says the policy also neglects children over the age of 10, whose families have been locked up for more than a year.

Other human rights groups tentatively welcomed the move but echoed the commission's concerns about the hundreds of children left languishing in centres on Christmas Island and Nauru.

Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young said keeping those vulnerable children locked up was unacceptable, and the centres should be immediately closed.

The opposition said the government was merely claiming credit for a Labor plan to get children out of detention.

The government's changes also mean 1547 children now in community detention could be moved onto bridging visas.

Community detention, which has always been supported by a suite of social services, will be reserved for the most vulnerable families.

Mr Morrison defended the decision to keep children in offshore detention centres, saying the government had to deter people from getting on boats.

The offshore resettlement policy came in on July 19 last year.

"I certainly don't want children getting on boats, and customs officers and navy officers having to go back to the gruesome tasks of saving children in the water, and in the worst case, getting corpses out of the water," Mr Morrison said.

His announcement comes just days before he is due to give evidence to the Human Rights Commission inquiry into children in detention.

The inquiry has heard claims of self-harm, mental health problems and medical neglect and Prof Triggs is expected to grill Mr Morrison over the government's policies.

But the minister dismissed questions about the timing of his announcement as "cynical" and said the government had been planning the changes for months.

Moving families from detention centres and out of the community detention program while their refugee applications are processed will save the budget about $50 million.

"Why has it taken 12 months for Scott Morrison to show any compassion towards kids in detention?" Mr Marles told reporters.

"It is very interesting that - in a week where the minister is to appear before the Human Rights Commission's inquiry into children in detention - we hear, for the first time, any concern from him about the plight of kids in detention."